


Sky Above Us Shoots to Kill

by yet_intrepid



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: First War with Voldemort, Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 09:10:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"They held one another at wandpoint almost casually, as though this were one more tense meeting in the halls of Hogwarts or of Grimmauld Place. It was not unexpected that it should come to this, brothers, both now in sober black instead of their contrasting schoolboy green and red, both now with the power to capture, torture, or kill the other."</p>
<p>Sirius and Regulus encounter one another during the first war, and their fight becomes a pretext for conversations they never had. </p>
<p>Inspired by the song "Thistle and Weeds" by Mumford and Sons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sky Above Us Shoots to Kill

_Spare me your judgments and spare me your dreams_   
_Cause recently mine have been tearing my seams_   
_I sit alone in this winter_   
_Clarity which clouds my mind._

"Thistle and Weeds," Mumford and Sons.

* * *

 

They held one another at wandpoint almost casually, as though this were one more tense meeting in the halls of Hogwarts or of Grimmauld Place. It was not unexpected that it should come to this, brothers, both now in sober black instead of their contrasting schoolboy green and red, both now with the power to capture, torture, or kill the other.

It was fitting, even, Regulus decided, as the rain stuck his black hair to his pale forehead and soaked his robes. Poetic justice, that he should account for his blood-traitor brother.

But they were silent, and their wands were still, and they watched each other for a very long moment until Sirius finally began to laugh.

“You’re an idiot, Reg,” he said. “An idiot.”

“You’ve been saying that all our lives,” Regulus reminded him calmly. “Since I was four years old and chose my blocks over riding toy brooms off the banisters with you. Blocks never gave me bloody noses and broken arms. And now—I’m building something, Sirius, and you’re plummeting.”

Sirius tossed him a silent knockback jinx for that. “You’re building a monster,” he retorted, as Regulus blocked the spell neatly. “It’ll eat you alive.”

Regulus scoffed. “Spare me the dramatics, please. I get enough of them from Bellatrix, although with the opposite intent.”

“Oh yes.” Sirius laughed again, more bitterly yet. “I’m the monster to her. Me and the Muggles and everyone who dares not to control their parentage. Come on, Reg, I know you’re an idiot, but surely not idiot enough to really go for that?”

Regulus rolled his eyes and cast a jet of red light, which Sirius dodged. “At least I have better reasons than ‘Mother and Father annoy me’ for my decisions.”

“And what would those be? ‘Mother and Father want me to’? I fail to see how that’s superior.”

Regulus frowned, blocking two more jinxes and a hex. “Doesn’t the family name mean anything to you?”

“Oh, it means a hell of a lot.” Sirius stepped a little closer. “It means restrictions, prejudice, limitations. Being expected to be something I’m not. It means stuffiness and stupidity and—oh, come on, Reg, did you just try a  _jelly-legs jinx_?”

“You’re talking like a child,” Regulus said. “I figured I might as well give in to some old urges myself. Do you have any idea how many bat-bogey hexes I’ve wanted to send at you in the course of my life? And the night you left—”

And he was firing off spells, a fifteen-year-old’s spells, a knee-reversal hex and a tickling hex and a stinging hex, Levicorpus and Tarantallegra and Avis Oppugno. Half of them got through Sirius’ shield charms, leaving him dancing with a swollen face and surrounded by pecking birds. Sirius, struggling, cast Finite three times over while Regulus stood watching, and then raised his eyebrows.

“That’s what the great Dark Lord teaches you, is it?” he asked as he caught his breath. “We’ll have won within a fortnight at that rate.”

“Damn it, Sirius,” Regulus spat at him, “I couldn’t—you know I never could—not you. Insufferable as you’ve always been.”

The rain was growing heavier. Sirius flicked strands of hair out of his face and glared at his brother, who met his eye with a fierceness he did not feel.

“So,” said Sirius—slowly, mockingly. “Even though I’m a blood traitor, you’re admitting I’m a person. And of course you can’t torture a fellow person. Very generous of you, Reg. You’ve got an interesting definition of personhood there. Snape’s a halfblood; does he qualify? What about a Muggleborn first-year? What about a Muggle baby? Where do you draw the line, hmm?”

“At least I draw it somewhere,” said Regulus, through clenched teeth. His extended wand-arm was shaking.

Sirius shook his head, then sprang into an advance. Regulus retreated, careful of his footing in the mud as he blocked and shielded, but his divided attention let another knockback jinx through and he found himself several feet away, aching and dirty, scrambling up.

Thunder rumbled. Regulus cast Incarcerous, but Sirius’ Diffindo sliced the ropes before they could bind him.

“If I didn’t have  _standards_ ,” Sirius growled, “I’d give you a nice memorable Cruciatus. Fortunately for you—”

“Fortunately for me, it takes practice,” Regulus informed him, “and a burst of anger won’t always do it; it’s easier if you can cast cold…”

“And you’d know!” Sirius fired back. His wand began to swish through the air again, and Regulus went back on the defensive. “You’d know, because you’ve practiced and used it; you’ve  _tortured_! You sick excuse for a person, who was it? Somebody we went to school with for starters—and then a couple Muggle kids—maybe an old lady?”

“Shut up, Sirius.” Regulus’ voice was cold and dangerous. “Shut the hell up. You don’t know what it’s like—”

“—well hell, I’d hope not—”

“—learning to use it by feeling it over and over again, torturing under threat of being tortured—”

Regulus thought he saw Sirius flinch at that. Taking advantage of his hesitation in casting, Regulus threw a combination he’d learned in seventh-year Defense. Sirius tripped, but caught himself, and as he straightened up his burning eyes bored into Regulus’.

“You disgusting little coward,” he said. “No self-respecting Gryffindor would make somebody else take that pain. But you’re Slytherin to the bloody core, aren’t you? Self-preservation! Now there’s a noble goal!”

“If you value martyrdom so much, I can oblige you,” Regulus told him. “Merlin knows you couldn’t practice self-preservation even in the most desperate circumstances.”

“Yeah, because I care about some things more than I mind dying! What do you care about, Regulus? Anything?”

Regulus’ eyebrows rose a bit at that and they both knew the answer. Instead of replying, he sent Sirius another couple of schoolboy jinxes, easily deflected. And then they stood there still, wands up, breathing heavily. Rain pounded down and they both glanced up at a flash of lightning to ensure that it wasn’t a spell from someone flying above.

“Defect, then,” Sirius finally said, when their eyes met again. “Only way.”

It was Regulus’ turn to laugh.

“It doesn’t matter, you realize,” he said quietly, after a moment. “I’ve already taken sides, and we’re both dead in the end. Everybody’s dead. Right or wrong, dark or light, active or passive. There’s no surviving this.”

Sirius lunged at him bodily then, taking him by the shoulders and shaking him, shouting about hope and fighting to the end and the worth of resistance and dying for what’s right, but Regulus could hardly hear; the closeness of his brother was more than he could bear and he wanted to weep like he had on the night that Sirius had flown away on that absurd motorcycle and left him alone in the dark.

And then he glanced up at the sky.

“Stupefy me,” he blurted out.

“—What?”

“Stupefy me and get out of here.”

Sirius followed his gaze. Three more Death Eaters were flying in, wands at the ready.

“Fine then,” said Sirius, and raised his wand, but paused with its tip against Regulus’ forehead. “I’ve told you before, Reg, but you never listened,” he said. “If you’re dead anyway, squeeze in the best life you can before the end.”

The last thing Regulus saw before unconsciousness was Sirius’ gray eyes, which were half-veiled behind dripping hair and seemed almost to plead with him.


End file.
